More local residents have trouble affording something to eat

Living on her husband’s youth pastor salary, Kate McCoy always had a modest food budget – $80 a week for a family of five.

When food prices began to rise and the family’s income didn’t, the stay-at-home mom needed to think creatively about how to feed her family.

With the help of a coupon-savvy friend, Internet blogs and websites, coupons and sales, McCoy has been able to maintain her family’s food budget, even lowering it $10 to $15 a week.

McCoy, of Whitesboro, is among a growing group of Americans trying to meet the rising cost of food in a tough economy.

That struggle shows in a recent report released by the Food Research and Action Center that shows 18 percent of Americans did not have enough money to buy food in 2010. Regionally, 15.7 percent of respondents in the Northeast showed a food hardship.

Nationally, the percentage of Americans facing food hardship represented a decrease from the last quarter of 2008 when it was 19.5 percent.

But that incremental recovery hasn’t necessarily trickled down locally, according to local social service agencies.

Lucille Soldato, Oneida County Department of Social Services Commissioner, said food-stamp cases “have been increasing for the past three years.”

“That hasn’t slacked off,” she said.

The number of individual cases in Oneida County is 33,412, Soldato said.

In Herkimer County, the number of individuals on food stamps in February was 9,514, according to a report by the Department of Social Services.

From 2009 to 2010, Hope House in Utica saw a 15 percent increase in the number of people it serves at its food kitchen despite the opening of Mother Marianne’s West Side Kitchen, a soup kitchen in West Utica, said Betty Abel-Jellencich, food services and volunteer coordinator at Hope House.

The early numbers indicate 2011 could see an increase as well. Hope House served 1,660 more people in January 2011 than January 2010, Abel-Jellencich said.

“It’s a larger increase than we’ve seen in years past,” Abel-Jellencich said, adding that the faces of the hungry also are changing. Many seeking meals are the working poor and people living in the suburbs who have just enough to pay their rent, but nothing left for meals, she said.

Affording food isn’t just a problem of the poor anymore.

Energy costs have risen dramatically, salaries have remained stagnant and food costs have increased nearly 4 percent in the past month, The Associated Press reports. The food-cost increase marked the biggest gain since November 1974, mostly due to a 50 percent increase in the cost of vegetables.

One local nonprofit, Compassion Coalition, seeks to serve these people by offering food at a reduced rate through its for-profit grocery store, Your Bargain Grocer. The store helps support the nonprofit operation, which provides toiletries, food and furniture to its member nonprofit agencies.

The store on Columbia Street in Utica sells the surplus, outdated or slightly damaged brand-name products below retail, said Compassion Coalition Executive Director Charlie Sweet.

“We’re like a thrift store for food,” he said, holding up a bag of a half-dozen fresh lemons for $1.19. “I try to price way below Walmart … and people are even having a hard time with our prices.”

Though the products, which come from mainstream grocery stores, aren’t consistent, the prices typically are, Sweet said.

On a recent Wednesday, the grocer offered items such as a 5-pound bag of Dino’s Meatballs or a 4-pound whole organic chicken for $4.45. Two-and-a-half pounds of Purdue Ground Turkey were priced at $2.75; two Healthy Choice Steamers sold for $3.

Shoppers range from those on food stamps to doctors and lawyers, but the newest faces are those with two incomes, Sweet said.

“It takes two incomes to run a household,” he said. “Gasoline is $3.69 a gallon; everything has gone up. … We’re seeing people charging groceries on credit cards.”

Phil Turrell, 64, travels from Little Falls each week to take advantage of the store’s “very low prices on produce and meat.”

While he mainly shops for other lower-income friends in his neighborhood, he doesn’t know what people would do without the store.

“There is such a savings,” he said, pointing to how he typically saves $20 on a case of produce or meat. “People who don’t have money or are on a fixed income, this is an important thing to have.”

Betty Anna, 59, of Ohio, agrees. The grandmother of 10 shops for family and supplements her weekly grocery shopping with items from Your Bargain Grocer and estimates she saves 50 percent on fresh produce, cereals and snack foods.

“Twenty cents a peach,” she said while shopping on a recent lunch break from her job in Utica. “Where can you get that that cheap?”

Original Article from the OD.com